Flatland
right to left so as to indicate their presence to those behind
them; others oblige a Woman, when travelling, to be followed
by one of her sons, or servants, or by her husband; others
confine
Women altogether to their houses except during the religious
festivals. But it has been found by the wisest of our
Circles or Statesmen that the multiplication of restrictions on
Females tends not only to the debilitation and diminution of
the race, but also to the increase of domestic murders to such
an extent that a State loses more than it gains by a too
prohibitive Code.
For whenever the temper of the Women is thus exasperated by confinement at home or hampering regulations abroad, they are apt to vent their spleen upon their husbands and children; and in the less temperate climates the whole male population of a village has been sometimes destroyed in one or two hours of simultaneous female outbreak. Hence the Three Laws, mentioned above, suffice for the better regulated States, and may be accepted as a rough exemplification of our Female Code.
After all, our principal safeguard is found, not in Legislature, but in the interests of the Women themselves. For, although they can inflict instantaneous death by a retrograde movement, yet unless they can at once disengage their sting- ing extremity from the struggling body of their victim, their own frail bodies are liable to be shattered.
The power of Fashion is also on our side. I pointed out that in some less civilized States no female is suffered to stand in any public place without swaying her back from right to left. This practice has been universal among ladies of any pretensions to breeding in all well-governed States, as far back as the memory of Figures can reach. It is considered a disgrace to any State that legislation should have to enforce what ought to be, and is in every respectable female, a natural instinct. The rhythmical and, if I may so say, well-modulated undulation
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